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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Coliseum for Dummies: Northrend Beasts Encounter

As I mentioned before I did Northrend Beasts Encounter twice last weekend, once on 10s and once on 25s. It's most definitely a challenging fight that requires quite a bit of coordination, but a lot of it comes once again down to knowing what to do when.

Since the Ulduar for Dummies guides keep getting good visitor numbers (meaning they must be useful to people), I figured that I would throw one in for the first encounter of the Coliseum.

GeneralOther sites have gotten way deeper into the structure of the fight and have gone way deeper into the different abilities that you will meet in this encounter. I will however not, and will only give you the short rundown of what you need to pay attention to.

If you do wish to get the full view, I would suggest to skip over to world of matticus, where it says that it's for healers, but every role can find the information here laid out in a pretty neat way.

Phase 1: Gormok the Impaler

He does an impale, tanks need to switch after 2 or 3 impales. On 10s we switched between 2 tanks, on 25s we rotated between 3 tanks.(it can be done with 2, but 3 is safer).

He also does a stomp which does damage to everybody in melee range and prevents spell casting for 8 seconds. Melee will need healing, and ranged should simply stay out of it.

Don't stand in the fire.

Most important in this phase is to kill the snobolds. Whoever gets the snobold should call out that they have it, and all dps should switch to kill it. It's less important to dps the boss than it is to kill the snobolds!

Phase 2: Acidmaw and Dreadscale

On 10s we have a tank per worm, on 25s we had 1 tank on the poison worm (Acidmaw) and 2 tanks on the fire worm (Dreadscale)

The worms alternate between being movable, and being stuck in the ground

The poison worm sprays poison that paralyses

The fire worm sticks a fire dot on people (called Burning Bile).

The Burning Bile frees the paralysed people, but also damages the people around you. Only 1 person should be freeing paralyzed people otherwise multiple fire dots will kill people instead of free them.

On 25s the tank who got the fire dot went to free the paralyzed people while the second tank took over tanking the fire worm for the time being. On 10s a melee should carry the fire dot to the paralyzed tank.

Don't stand in poison clouds, and if possible you move the worm out of them.

Both worms should be faced away from the raid at all times, all attacks are frontal attacks.

Some nature and fire resistance may help, especially in 25s where you should have the classes to spare to stick these resists up

You kill the poison worm first! When he is dead you kill the fire worm who then does more damage since he enrages, but this you should easily be able to heal through.

When you've gotten through phase 2 with enough people alive, you win.

Phase 3: Icehowl

Tank him away from the raid, preferably facing a wall (he has a knockback, annoying for the tank to have to run back every time)

Spread out in a half circle behind him. He does an ice breath thing that causes damage and prevents you from casting while it's on you, and you don't want all your healers to be caught in this thing at the same time.

Frequently he runs to the middle, stomps everybody to the side, and people take some damage. Make sure they are over 80% health when he does the stomp.

After the stomp he focuses someone.

He then jumps back a little and storms to that person.

When he hits anybody he enrages, and his damage increases enormously

When he doesn't hit people he knocks against the wall, knocking himself out, and then takes increased damage himself.

After focusing someone everybody gets a fast running buff, allowing you to run away from where he will charge.

Most important here is to run away from where he will charge and make sure nobody gets hit by the charge. On 25s if he does hit someone his damage goes up so enormously that he starts one-shotting tanks.

Not good to kill tanks, you really want to make sure you're away from where he was focusing.

He does have an enrage timer, but if you come through phase 2 with enough people you should not run into it.

One last general advice, don't give up if a lot of people are dead in phase 2 and you've never seen phase 3. Try to at least get into phase 3 so everybody can see what I mean with the focusing and charging. There are videos out there, but it really helps to just see it once. So keep at it, even though you're thinking wipe recovery will be faster when you just wipe it.

Congrats!

I might have forgotten some abilities, but if I did it means that they are all fairly easy to deal with

One of many loot tables for the Coliseum can be found at MMO-Champion.

At 25s and heroic 10s the bosses drop a Trophy of the Crusade. These are needed for your tier 9 sets, and can be traded in together with a pile of Emblems of Triump to get tier pieces.At heroic 25 the bosses seem to drop an item that you can trade in for a tier piece without needing emblems of triumph.

phase 1 - /agree - stay out of the fire, kill the snobolds. make a make a targeting macro, or for ranged simply tab target. we put a ranged assigned to marking a kill order on them in 25's. at some points in the fight you'll have 2 or 3 up.

phase 2 - think grobbulus fight. one worm is tanked in the middle and the other is tanked around like grob. stay out of the fire (poison cloud now). if you get the poison debuff, go to center of room. one person with fire debuff simply runs by them. like, literally just make a pass by.

phase 3 - great write up here too. only forgot one thing. if he hits someone on his charge, as you state, he enrages and does bad things. but if this happens it's not necessarily a wipe. a hunter can tranq shot him out of enrage. pick him back up and start again. you lose the debuff he gives himself when he knocks himself out and you can do more damage, but the day is not over if he catches someone and enrages.